International Business Machines Corporation

Parallels International Gmbh

Parallels IP Holdings Gmbh

James Bottomley

Pavel Emelyanov

Michael Rapoport

Joel Kelly Nider

Embodiments of the present systems and methods may provide additional security mechanisms inside an operating system kernel itself by executing system calls in a dedicated address space to reduce the amount of shared resources that are visible to and thus exploitable by a malicious application. For example, in an embodiment, a method implemented in a computer may comprise a processor, memory accessible by the processor, and computer program instructions stored in the memory and executable by the processor, the method may comprise: when a user process makes a system call, switching to kernel mode and using a system call page table for the user process to execute a system call handler, when the system call handler attempts to access unmapped kernel space memory, generating a page fault, and handling the page fault by determining whether the attempted access to unmapped kernel space memory is allowed.

Executing system calls in isolated address space in operating system kernel

Embodiments of the present systems and methods may provide additional security mechanisms inside an operating system kernel itself by isolating parts of the kernel to protect them from attacks. For example, in an embodiment, a computer-implemented method implemented in a computer comprising a processor, memory accessible by the processor, and computer program instructions stored in the memory and executable by the processor, the method may comprise: creating a namespace in an operating system kernel-space in the memory of the computer, creating an address space for the namespace that maps only kernel objects owned by the namespace, and providing access to kernel objects owned by the namespace only to the least one user process using the combined page table.

Limited execution environment for monolithic kernel

A method, system and computer program product for a VPN for containers and VMs implemented on different network node. A number of network hardware nodes have containers and VMs running on them. The containers and VMs are aggregated into VPNs assembled across the hardware nodes. Each hardware node has a network edge programmable switch configured to route packets to containers and VMs only inside a particular VPN. The switch detects a number of the VPN inside the packet header, replaces this number by a standard broadcast header number and multi-casts the packet to the containers and the VMs inside the VPN.

Growing community of inventors

Bellevue, WA, United States of America

James Bottomley